Monday, April 17, 2017

SAINT SOR JUANA INÉS DE LA CRUZ

She was exceptional not only for her intelligence
and beauty, but also because she wrote literature centered on
intellectual and sexual freedom.

In the poem "Redondillas" she
defends a woman's right to be respected as a human being. "Hombres
necios" (Stubborn men) criticizes the sexism of the society of her time,
and pokes fun at men who publicly condemn prostitutes, among other
things, but privately hire them.

She also has a philosophical
approach to the relative immorality of prostitution. This was
exemplified when she posed the question, "Who sins more, she who sins
for pay or he who pays for sin?"

In the romantic comedy entitled
"Los empeños de una casa" about a brother and a sister entangled in a
web of love, she writes using two of her most prominent themes, love and
jealousy.

She did not moralize, but rather, in the spirit of her
lifetime interests, inquired of how these deeply emotional matters
shaped and carved a woman's pursuit of liberty, knowledge, education and
freedom to live her life in self-sovereignty.

Her revolutionary
writings brought down upon her the ire of the Roman Catholic Church at
the end of the 17th Century. She was ordered to tone down the sexuality
of her writings. She did not.

However, powerful representatives
from the Spanish court were her mentors and she was widely read in
Spain, being called "The Tenth Muse". She was lauded as the most
prominent poet of the post-conquest American Continent. Her work was
printed by the first printing press of the American Continent in Mexico
City.

She is believed to have penned 4,000 works, but only a few
have survived. They were rescued by the Spanish Viceroy's wife, who was
rumored to be her female lover. In April 1695, after ministering to the
other sisters struck down by a rampant plague, she is said to have died
at four in the morning on April 17th.

For her love of learning
and her devotion to the beauty of sexuality and for her courage to write
about controversial things in the face of the Spanish Inquisition, we
honor Saint Sor Juana as a Prophet of Homoeros.